Ear to the ground
“Now I know why I’m retarded. I’ve watched a lot of Sponge Bob.”
– A Durango parent commenting on the fact that the TV show may be linked with attention deficit disorder

Drugs and Nucla
The nearby town of Nucla has gone where few former uranium boomtowns have gone before – into the pages of the New Yorker. The current issue of the magazine takes a trip into the Western Slope backwater, where writer Peter Hessler reveals the “life of a small-town druggist,” Don Colcord.
Colcord runs Nucla’s Apothecary Shoppe and firmly considers himself a “druggist” and not a pharmacist. “A druggist is the guy who repairs your watch and your glasses,” he says. “A pharmacist is the guy who works at Walmart.”

Colcord wears many hats at the Apothecary Shoppe. “He takes people’s blood pressure, and he often gives injections; if it has to be done in the backside, he escorts the customer into the bathroom for privacy,” Hessler writes. “Elderly folks refer to him as ‘Dr. Don,’ although he has no medical degree and discourages people from using this title.”

However, times are tough for the Levi’s-wearing druggist, due largely to Medicare Part D, a 2006 prescription drug program that’s hurting rural drug stores and driving patients toward cheap mail-order meds.  

But Nucla’s druggist is taking it on the chin and keeping his door open, even if it means writing off tens of thousands of dollars in losses each year. “It’s just a cost of doing business in a small town,” Colcord says. “I don’t know how you can look your neighbor in the eye and say, ‘I know you’re having a tough time, but I can’t help you, and your kid can’t get well.’”